About suffering they were never wrong,
                    The Old Masters; how well they understood
                    Its human position; how it takes place
                    While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
                        walking dully along;
                    How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
                    For the miraculous birth, there always must be
                    Children, who did not specially want it to happen, skating
                    On a pond at the edge of a wood:
                    They never forgot
                    That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
                    Anyhow in a corner; some untidy spot
                    Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's
                         horse
                    Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

                    In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
                    Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
                    Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
                    But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
                    As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
                    Water: and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
                    Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
                    Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.